


Onus

by badgirlcarly



Category: Thunderheart (1992)
Genre: Corporal Punishment, Domestic Discipline, M/M, Punishment, Spanking
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-06-22
Updated: 2017-06-22
Packaged: 2020-12-17 08:35:38
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,484
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/21051449
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/badgirlcarly/pseuds/badgirlcarly
Summary: Crow Horse has given Ray a lot to think about.





	Onus

  
None of Crow Horse’s irritation was lost over the phone line. 

“When I get home, I want to walk into the kitchen and see three things: A fresh cut switch, you with your nose in the corner, and a paper with the words, _If I can't behave, I will be spanked on my bare bottom_ written neatly fifty times. Do I make myself absolutely and unequivocally clear?”

Ray’s gut cramped with dread. He swallowed thickly. 

“Yes, sir,” he said quietly. 

“You got an hour and a half,” Crow Horse said, and the line clicked dead. 

Ray sighed. He put the phone on the cradle and prepared for Crow Horse’s arrival. He set a lined legal pad and a good black pen on the kitchen table, the last place he would be sitting comfortably for a while. Then he took the paring knife from the knife block and went outside. 

The switch was easily his least favorite implement, and he loathed being sent to cut one. He spent the whole time selecting a young branch and cleaning the leaves from it suffocating on dread, and then handing it over, delivering the hated weapon that would soon mark his butt, felt so traitorous. And then, every time the switch cut across his bottom, Ray would think that maybe he could have cut a different switch that would have hurt less. It was a short jump from there to, _this is all my fault, I'm getting this awful punishment because of something I did_, which was exactly what he was supposed to think about when he was being disciplined, but a realization that was never easy to swallow. 

There was a paper birch with low, slender branches and peeling white bark not far from the back porch, and it was usually where Ray cut his switch. He selected a branch, tested it for pliancy. It bent in his hand, so he cut it off the tree, began to whittle off the shoots and buds. When he was finished, the switch was straight and clean. It was about the same thickness as a pencil, and very light. Ray gave it a little flick, and there was the familiar, horrible _whoosh_ as it cut through the air. Ray sighed. He was getting too good at this. 

Ray set the switch on the table beside the legal pad. He sat down, took the pen in hand. The lines running down the pad seemed to stretch on endlessly. 

_1._ he wrote, and then sighed. Crow Horse could have easily requested he write, _I will not misbehave_ or even _I will not be a fucking restless idiot who gets in trouble for no reason_, but that wasn't what he wanted. 

Ray gritted his teeth. He pressed pen to paper and wrote in his neat script: _If I can't behave, I will be spanked on my bare bottom_. It was humiliating. Crow Horse knew that when he assigned it. But that was the point. That was part of being punished like this. 

_If I can't behave, I will be spanked on my bare bottom_.  
_If I can't behave, I will be spanked on my bare bottom_.  
_If I can't behave, I will be spanked on my bare bottom_.

When he was finished, Ray set the pad and the pen on the table next to the switch. He looked at the tableau for a moment, anxiety cramping his gut. He took a deep breath, released it. As wound up as he was, the next part was going to be hard. But that was the idea.

Ray walked to the corner. He faced the joint, stared at the faded floral wallpaper that had been glued up when the house was built in the 1920s. Ray rested his forehead against the wall, let it take some of his weight. It was so quiet, all he could hear was his breathing. In, out. In, out. 

_I am going to get spanked,_ he thought. _When Crow Horse gets home, I am going to get whipped with the switch._

He squeezed his eyes closed, tried to think of anything else. But he couldn’t. The silent, dark corner made an echo chamber with the same thought over and over: _I’m getting a spanking I’m getting a spanking I’m getting a spanking I’m getting a spanking._

He was almost grateful when he heard Crow Horse drive up. The whipping was going to hurt, it was going to hurt so bad, but at least once it was over, it was _over_. He could stop torturing himself. Crow Horse wouldn’t be mad at him, because he would have paid for his impetuousness. Over. Forgiven. Done.

And that part—that part felt really, really nice.

Ray heard the door open and close, Crow Horse’s boots on the hardwood. He heard Crow Horse come into the kitchen and pause at the table, looking over the switch and Ray’s lines. The switch was perfect, he knew, and the lines were written in the same careful script as the reports he submitted, so there could be no objection. He’d done a good job; he had not tried to subvert Crow Horse in the small ways he could. Sometimes he resented Crow Horse for punishing him, but he was rarely that petty and stupid as to, say, skip a line writing or try to pass off a brittle switch.

Ray felt Crow Horse crowd his back, felt Crow Horse rest his hand on his shoulder, tickle his neck with the rough pads of his fingers.

“I need you to get your head on straight, boy,” he said. “Running reckless can get you hurt—has gotten you hurt—more than just a striped up ass. You know that.”

Ray’s voice wavered, and he felt tears sting his eyes. “I know. I’m sorry.”

“Come on with me,” Crow Horse said.

Ray pulled himself from the corner and followed Crow Horse to the kitchen table. Crow Horse pulled one of the high-backed chairs away from the table, set it on its own on the tile with the back facing Ray.

“Get your britches down, and bend over, hands in the seat.”

Ray obeyed. This was not a position he liked; he felt more open and exposed than over the knee or bending over something lower, like the counter or the arm of the couch, and the back of the chair dug into his stomach. That was the least of his problems, though. He watched as Crow Horse picked up the switch, gave it a few practice swings, resulting in the _whoosh_ sound that made his stomach flip-flop. He watched Crow Horse and the switch come toward him. He forced his eyes to stay focused on the wood grain swirls beneath the lacquer of the chair beneath his palms as Crow Horse and the switch stop behind him.

“I want this to be a good reminder for you to think before you act,” Crow Horse said.

Ray tried to say, “Yes, sir,” but it got stuck in his throat.

The air cut, that awful _whoosh_, and a lash of fire like a brand seared across Ray’s backside. He howled. He had long since stopped trying to take a switch whipping like a man. Crow Horse started bringing the switch down on Ray’s ass quickly. They landed with a cruel sting, and he crisscrossed them over each other, which not only covered every inch of Ray’s ass and thighs with pain, but maximized the pain by smacking against raw flesh. Ray choked on sobs. It felt like the switch was bloodying his whole backside with welts, but he knew that, when it was all over, he’d only have a few. 

Each stroke of the switch against Ray’s raw flesh ignited liquid hot pain, and Crow Horse’s tempo had become so even that it became the rhythm for the ugly truth chanted in Ray’s head: _bad boy bad boy bad boy bad boy you were a bad boy_.

Ray got so lost in the chant and so swept up in the red hot pain pulsing through his ass and thighs that it was a moment before he realized he wasn’t being whipped anymore. Crow Horse brushed by him, placing the switch back on the table. Ray drooped over the back of the chair and let himself cry.

Crow Horse made some quiet shushing noises, and rubbed Ray’s back until he was calmer. Then he pulled Ray up, turned him around, took him into his arms face to face so that there wasn’t and pressure against his well-whipped bottom.

Ray cried himself dry, and then he worked on getting his breathing deep and even.

“You learn a good lesson, huh?” Crow Horse asked.

“Yes,” Ray said softly. “Thank you for helping me learn it.”

Crow Horse kissed him. “That’s my job, honey. That’s my job.”

Ray snuggled in. This part. This part was worth it.  



End file.
